Blog

“‘Portal land,’ my friend Sander jokingly remarked back in late 2017 when I told him I was moving to Portland. As it turned out, it was no joke... You see, I’ll be leaving Portland on or around May 28. Likely for good.”

It is March 28, 2019, 25 years, more than a dozen books, many thousands of miles and countless lifetimes since the moment of The MoonQuest’s conception. It’s hard to remember that Toronto writer who was so stressed by the loss of control The MoonQuest demanded of him. After all, when you have no idea what you’re writing from one word to the next, you have to surrender a hell of a lot of control!

Although I am posting this memoir-excerpt-as-tribute on World AIDS Day, it's important to remember that AIDS/HIV is with us 365 days a year...and not only in the West and not only in the LGBTQ community (although it is in the LGBTQ community, Mike Pence).

I take the same intuitive approach to my life as I do to my writing. While other coaches and instructors recommend applying a regular routine to creative production, that never works for me for very long. Rather, I remain as in-the-moment as I can and follow wherever the inspiration leads me — in my life as well as in my writing.

Whether it’s historically, spiritually or metaphysically, November 11 carries much meaning for many people. It carries a particularly personal significance for me: That was the date of my bar mitzvah. Yet that my bar mitzvah occurred on 11/11 wouldn’t be the only measure of the day’s import, as I relate in this excerpt from my memoir.

I’m often asked whether I have one piece of advice for writers. I don’t…because I have 10! These 10 tips have helped me write more than a dozen books (award-winning fiction and nonfiction), not to mention three optioned screenplays and countless articles and essays. They can help you too, whether you’re a seasoned writer or working on your first project and whatever your form, medium or genre.

When a powerful intuitive impulse prompted me to cross into the US from my native Canada on July 9, 1997, I couldn't know that not only would I not be going back, but that 21 years later I would be on my way to becoming a US citizen; a dual Canadian/US citizen, to be precise. Today, on the 21st anniversary of my "accidental immigration," I recount how I got here all those years ago, in a story excerpted from Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir.

Few of the stories I share about my father in my memoir are flattering. Not only was he physically and emotionally absent, he wasn’t even my natural father. Yet I carry his name, and of my three fathers, he is the only one I ever think of as "Daddy." So on this Father's Day, a half-century after his death, I share this tale of love and reconciliation….